The Israeli army provided new details that changed its initial version of the murder of 15 emergency workers near the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip last month, but said researchers still examine the evidence.
The 15th to March 23 and buried in one, where their bodies were found a week later by. Another man is still missing.
The military of Israel initially said that the soldiers opened fire on vehicles that approached their position in a “suspicious” way in the dark, without lights or markings. They said they killed nine Hamas and Islamic jihad militants who were traveling on vehicles of the Crescent Palestinian red.
However, a recovered video of one of the dead men and published by the Crescent Red Palestinian shows emergency workers in their uniforms and clearly marked firefighters and trucks, with the lights on, being shot by Israeli soldiers.
The only known survivor of the incident, the Paramedian of the Crescent Palestinian Red Munther Abed, also said he saw Israeli soldiers opening fire against clearly identified emergency vehicles.
An Israeli military officer said at the end of Saturday that investigators are examining the video and that the conclusions should be presented to the army commanders on Sunday.
The Israeli media informed by the military reported that the troops had identified at least six of the 15 dead as members of militant groups. However, the officer refused to provide any evidence or detail of how identifications were made, saying that he did not want to share confidential information.
“According to our information, there were terrorists at the scene, but the investigation is not over,” he told reporters on Saturday night.
The UN and the Palestinian Red Cross required an independent investigation into the death of the paramedics.
Red crescent officials said 17 paramedics and emergency workers from Red Crescent, Civil Emergency and UN service were sent to respond to reports of injuries caused by Israeli air strikes.
In addition to Abed, who was arrested for several hours before being released, another worker is still missing.
Open fire
The military officer said the initial results of the investigation around 4 am, killing two members of Hamas’s internal security forces and making another prisoner, who, according to the officer, admitted to interrogation to be from Hamas.
Over time, several vehicles passed the road until, around 6 am, he said the troops received information from the air surveillance that a suspected group of vehicles was approaching.
“They thought it was another incident like what happened at 4am and opened fire,” said the official.
He said the air surveillance images showed that Israeli troops were at a certain distance when they opened fire, and denied the reports that the Israeli troops handled at least some of the paramedics and shot them at close range.
“It was not closely. They opened fire from afar,” he said. “There are no abuse against people there.”
He said Israel’s soldiers had approached the group they had attacked, identifying at least some of them as militants. However, he did not explain what evidence led to this assessment.
“And in their view, they had a meeting with terrorists, which is a successful meeting with terrorists.”
He said the Israeli troops reported the UN about the same day attack and initially covered the bodies with a camouflage network until they could be recovered. UN authorities did not immediately respond to a request for commentary from Reuters.
“There was no incident in which the IDF tried to cover up. On the contrary, they called the UN immediately.”
Later, when the UN did not immediately arrive to take the bodies, the soldiers covered them with sand to prevent the animals from taking them, the employee said.
He said the vehicles were pushed out of the way by a heavy engineering vehicle to clean the road, but could not explain why the vehicles were crushed by the engineering vehicle and then buried.
